Alan Fennell
Alan Fennell was a TV and comic book writer mostly associated with the works of Gerry Anderson. He wrote for the 'TV Comic' graphic prints of Four Feather Falls and Supercar, one unproduced TV script for Supercar, 16 episodes of Fireball XL5, 23 episodes of Stingray and 10 episodes of Thunderbirds. He also shared script editing duties with Alan Pattillo on Thunderbirds and was the chief editor of TV21 Comics from its inception until 1966. History B&W Era Alan Fennell first became associated with Gerry Anderson while he was working as an assistant editor for TV Comic. He was looking for TV properties that could be turned into reading material for the comic and was able to negotiate the rights to produce a comic for Four Feather Falls. During a later script approval meeting for the comic, Anderson let loose that he was working on a new series called Supercar, which put Alan in a prime position to discuss the comic license for the new show as well. This was a success and the Supercar comic was well received by fans. When production on season 1 of Supercar was coming to a close, Gerry asked Alan Fennell for his thoughts on the scripts, to which he replied that they were too technically minded and not suitable for children. This may have had a knock on effect of giving Gerry the idea to write the scripts for season 2 himself, along with his wife Sylvia. Alan Fennell was well established as a comic writer by this point and thus was one of Gerry's first choices for writers to head the production of Fireball XL5. Alan would take his role as writer very seriously and would often employ his knowledge of comic writing to great effect when working on episode scripts. He understood that kids didn't want to be bogged down with unnecessary dialogue and thus his scripts were very action packed and didn't stay in one place for too long. Gerry also had a degree of creative input on his stories, where he would suggest changes, embellish certain aspects, or develop the concepts further than what Alan had originally envisioned. According to Alan, it would take around 2 hours to agree on the details of the story and a further 8 hours to actually write the script, well into the night. Although he provided many scripts for Anderson during Fireball XL5, his primary source of income was still comics. One of his major inspirations for his writing was imagining the stories through the eyes of the children they were meant for. Stingray and Beyond Alan's incredible talent for story telling and propensity for fast paced action did not go unnoticed by Gerry Anderson who was keen to bring the writer on full time for his next show, Stingray. Fennell would make the series very much his own and undoubtedly was responsible for a lot of the thrills and fantastic ideas the show would feature. His work was so well received that the Andersons gave him the opportunity to be an editor on the TV Century 21 comic, where Alan would feel right at home making all new stories for the crews of Fireball XL5 and Stingray. Of course he was also working on the scripts for several Thunderbirds episodes at this time and with this insider knowledge along with his long history of working with the Andersons, he was the perfect person to take the wheel of the new Anderson comic property on the block, Lady Penelope. This would serve to build up the introduction of the Thunderbirds show into TV21's pages and proved so popular that by the time Thunderbirds became a strip, Lady Penelope had branched off into it's own comic print. See Also *[[w:c:thunderbirds:Alan Fennell|Alan Fennell on the Thunderbirds Wiki]] Category:Production Crew Category:Writers Category:Script Editors Category:Comic Writers Category:Thunderbirds Category:Fireball XL5 Category:Stingray